Allparts Music Corporation has provided guitar and bass parts to manufacturers, wholesalers, musicians, luthiers, retail stores and guitar repair shops all over the world since 1982. With more than 5,000 products in its Houston, TX warehouse, the company is the world’s largest distributor of guitar, bass and amplifier parts, featuring distribution across six continents. Over the years, Allparts has developed a unique business structure, splitting sales between business and consumer audiences.

On the financial side, Allparts saves tens of thousands of dollars using 3dcart over Volusion. According to Dean, the results since the switch have been enormous—and it’s only the beginning. “In our industry, Allparts is recognized as a brand that sets the standard for quality, price and customer service,” Dean adds. “If we want to keep that status, we need a reliable, excellent software partner. 3dcart fulfills that need.

THE STORY: In 2009, Dean Peckenpaugh, Allparts’ IT director, saw the need for a new software platform. A few years prior, he’d worked with Volusion and had a strong experience. But after the transition, Dean began to notice something didn’t feel right.

"Volusion had undergone a huge migration, moving all of its content off of Rackspace and onto in-house servers. Soon after, the company started experiencing problems with uptime for its stores. That problem continues today.”

To make matters worse, working with Volusion threatened Allparts’ unique business model. Segmenting customers with Volusion required an enormous amount of custom code that Dean had to continually evaluate and update.

“Every time Volusion changed something, we were concerned about how it might affect the site,” says Dean. “There were actually times when things suddenly broke. It made us feel vulnerable as a business.”

Dean spent time asking questions in independent e-commerce forums, where 3dcart CTO Jimmy Rodriguez is a frequent contributor. He invited Dean to demo 3dcart, and a new relationship was quickly born. Allparts decided to make the transition.

“Not only do we pay lower fees with 3dcart—it’s also a slimmer platform that consumes less bandwidth than Volusion to perform the same actions,” Dean explains. “We get more bandwidth with 3dcart and use less. Even if we went over our core package, which we rarely do, it wouldn’t cost us half as much as Volusion.”

Price was only part of the equation. Three other core strengths within 3dcart helped sway Dean:Ease of Use: 3dcart requires no custom code or design. Dean is able to configure frontend presentation and backend settings with very little hassle.Customer Segmentation: Segmenting businesses and individuals is a simple process.Shipping and payment specifications automatically adjust based on different sign-in or checkout criteria.Simple Customization: Product and category page access was a huge bonus forDean. He also cites 3dcart’s 50+ email templates asextremely helpful features.